Across the globe, local farmers are being displaced to make way for energy crop plantations...

POLOCHIC VALLEY, GUATEMALA—Echoes from armed raids still seem to resound in this valley, eight hours north of the capital city. In early 2011 military and paramilitary forces forcibly evicted 13 communities of indigenous Mayan peasants—some 300 families were dispossessed of disputed land they had been living on for three years to secure the property rights of one powerful local family, the Widmanns, and its agribusiness company Chabil Utzaj.

GMO labeling is also a top concern for organic farmers and food producers across the nation, and getting GMOs out of our food supply is a passionate cause lead by non-GMO advocates throughout the world.“The best effort today ... bypasses the corporate driven politics and legislators, giving consumers the direct ability to require mandatory labeling of GMOs,” says Jeffrey Smith, America’s most prominent non-GMO advocate, GMO expert, and author of The Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating.

Eric Holt-Gimenez talks here about the persistent problem of hunger, and how it is a product of the industrial corporate food regime, rather than an anomaly or the result of scarcity. Since hunger, as well as environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, increasing carbon emissions and climate change are produced by this system, new ways of thinking and acting are needed to bring about real change.

West Lafayette, IN (SPX) Jan 13, 2012 - Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields, weakening their immune systems, making the vulnerable to other health issues.

In the Philippines, a new kind of conventional wisdom about food: chemical free, community strong.

Part of the high expenses of chemical agriculture is that farmers must buy new hybrid seeds each planting season, a costly proposition. The traditional seeds that Delia and other organic farmers here are using are saved from the previous harvest or “in-bred” locally to work best in this particular area. Delia complains that the government’s agricultural extension agents sometimes give out free hybrid seeds, and that they mainly give seminars on chemical agriculture rather than providing support for “zero-chem” farming.

Recent studies have found statistical links between pesticide use and an outbreak of Parkinson's disease in California farm towns. Researchers even know which chemicals are the likely culprits. What's the government doing about it?

Alarming signs that the overuse of human antibiotics in industrial farming of animals is blunting these key weapons against human disease, governments are taking action. Clampdown aims to stop spread of antibiotic drug-resistant microbes makin it harder to treat humans.

Cattle, swine, chickens and other livestock receive an estimated 80 percent of the nation's antibiotics, according to the FDA. Whether used to treat our future food, prevent the spread of disease in cramped conditions or simply to promote growth, animal antibiotics are thought to affect human health via multiple pathways: direct or indirect contact with food, water, air or anywhere manure goes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/antibiotic-farm-animals-fda-regulation_n_1193680.html

Researchers in Sweden have confirmed that exposure to pesticides classified as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increases the incidence of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

Known to be a “major risk factor” for heart attacks and strokes, atherosclerosis is one of many health threats posed by POPs pesticides, which can persist in the environment for years or decades after use. In fact, this study comes on the heels of several others in recent years that show a correlation between POPs and health harms associated with poor heart health, such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes.

The food crisis and the environmental crisis are two sides of one coin, so any solution to hunger and food security must also be sustainable and contribute to ecological integrity.

Olivier explains the principles of agroecology and why it is so important for transitioning away from fossil fuel technologies which dominate the industrial food system at present. In practice small scale, locally independent models are best for implementing it. However, if governments support the adoption and spread of agroecological principles it can be scaled up to meet the needs of food security around the world.

Farmers and civil society organizations around the world are outraged by the recent discovery of further connections between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and agribusiness titan Monsanto.

In the words of a representative from the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, “AGRA (founded by the Gates Foundation, is poison for our farming systems and livelihoods. Under the philanthropic banner of greening agriculture, AGRA will eventually eat away what little is left of sustainable small-scale farming in Africa.”

...there are reasons to think that our current anomalous abundance of inexpensive food may be only temporary; if so, present and future generations may become acquainted with that old, formerly familiar but unwelcome houseguest—famine.

The following are four principal bases (there are others) for this gloomy forecast.

Picking spots for cattle to graze could reverse desertification and even do its bit to retard climate change, new experiments in Zimbabwe have shown. It’s what is coming to be called the Brown Revolution.

Recent research conducted by scientists at the University of Sydney reveals that ants could also help farmers increase crop yields. The findings show that termites and ants improve soil fertility in drylands by digging tunnels that allow plants greater access to water. The research also found that termites provide plants additional nutrients because they increase the amount of nitrogen contained in soil showing a 36 percent increase in the amount of wheat produced.

This month, after more than 20 years of "assessment," the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to finally release limits for safe exposure to dioxins, nasty industrial pollutants that cause cancer, among other health harms [PDF]. You may have heard of dioxin as the military herbicide Agent Orange used in Vietnam, where it earned its distinction as "the most toxic compound synthesized by man." Unfortunately for the food industry, dioxins accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals that Americans consume

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